by Nye, Cedric
As Vanessa finished speaking, Jango saw the massive knot on her delicate cheek-bone and an ugly, low pitched and grinding snarl began rumbling up from deep in his chest.
The same nurse who'd spoken just moments before stepped forward, and put an arm protectively around Vanessa’s shoulders. Jango noticed the gesture, but he didn't understand what it meant until later.
When Vanessa noticed where his eyes had been, she lowered her chin so that her hair fell across the knot. “It's no big deal, Jango, I'm fine. But we need to get out of here because they could notice us missing at any minute.”
He wholeheartedly agreed with her logic, and he also knew that the dead sentries would be rising from the dead soon, and the six zombies would definitely present some problems for his ragtag crew of refugees.
“Okay,” Jango said. “I don’t think we can risk trying to get out through the main entrance to this place, so I'm gonna take you to where I climbed the wall to get in. I can boost you up the wall one at a time, and then we'll go from there.”
Without waiting to see if they would follow his lead, Jango headed back in the direction from which he had come. The group of fifty or so women and girls hustled to keep up with him as he flitted like a ghost along the deserted street.
Just as they reached the house where he had gained entrance to the development, they heard some kind of uproar from the other end of the housing complex. There were the muted sounds of shouts, and of engines being started. He knew that their time had run out.
Jango quickly herded his charges into the backyard of the stucco home. When the last person came through the gate, he closed it and pushed his way through the frightened women. He was worried that he would not be able to get them all over the fence before they were found.
Jango knew it was only a matter of time before they would have vehicles patrolling the outside of the wall to look for the women. He knew that he needed to move swiftly.
He thought about just boosting Vanessa up. Then he could jump up, pull himself over, and leave with the woman that he had decided to call sister. However, as he looked around at the desperate faces turned toward him with the faint glimmer of hope in their eyes, Jango knew that he would rather die than leave a single one of them behind.
His body began to thrum with the bone-deep power of his wrath. The almost palpable aura of violence that spilled from him pressed the women and girls back, almost as if a hand had come and pushed them away.
Jango looked around the yard, and saw a massive concrete planter that held a dead palm tree. The planter was two feet across at the top, and it was shaped like an inverted bell. It probably weighed more than three-hundred pounds, but as he strode toward it, the frightening power of his killing aspect made the massive planter seem to shrink, and become insignificant.
When Jango reached the planter, he grasped the rim of the heavy object and in a bone cracking display of raw power; he hefted the dead weight up to his chest. Then, in a heavy, awkward run, he moved toward the brick wall.
When he was about seven feet from the wall, he twisted his torso to the right, and then whipped forward faster than a snake could strike. He released the enormous concrete planter, and it slammed into the brick wall about chest height. It hit the wall like a wrecking ball. The bottom of the giant planter slammed into the bricks, and the bricks gave way like wet paper.
Jango kicked the loose bricks away to make the hole larger, and then quickly ushered the stunned group through the hole that he had made.
“Vanessa,” he whispered urgently. “Get them all far away from here. You head out to the parking lot, okay? Just run straight ahead, and don't look back. The keys are where I left them, and there are plenty of guns in the trunk. Hit the car rental place. You can't miss it. It’s right next to the Jive Juice Hut. You can get enough vehicles to get all these people out of here. Just be safe, little sister.” Jango did not realize that he had called her “little sister” out loud.
Vanessa, on the other hand, had heard him, and she knew that it was no small thing for someone like Jango to say. She felt hot tears in her eyes as Jango urgently pushed her and told her, “Run, run god dammit, and don't you look back.”
Vanessa ran, and she hated herself with every step. Nevertheless, she knew that if she refused, she would turn Jango's sacrifice into a punch line. Vanessa would be damned if her brother, her brother by choice, would be anybody's punch line. So she ran, and as she passed the other running women and girls, she told them, “Follow me!”
Vanessa did not look back.
Jango watched as Vanessa and the other escapees made a beeline for the dark outline of the Anthem mall. When he saw that they would be amongst the cars at the mall in a few seconds, he began to run.
Jango's legs were a pounding blur as he sprinted faster than any Olympian ever had. He still gripped his shotgun in his left hand and his deadly ironwood stick in his right. As he ran, the two weapons whistled through the air as his arms pumped like the pistons on a train.
He took a straight-line path back to the bowling alley, and the tractor-trailer with its payload of bowling balls. Now that he was no longer worried about stealth, it took less than two minutes to cover the half-mile to the bowling alley.
Swiftly, he made his way to the truck that was attached to the trailer full of bowling balls. He ran around to the driver’s side door, and noted that it was open. He quietly opened it the rest of the way and peeked inside. There was no movement, but he saw a smear that looked like blood spattered on the inside of the windshield. He quickly climbed into the cab and was relieved to see the key in the ignition.
Jango felt grateful that zombies didn't care about taking keys from the ignitions of vehicles. He was also grateful that zombies were not interested in stealing vehicles. He laughed as he visualized a moaning, wailing zombie trying to steal a car.
Jango turned the key and the truck roared to life. Looking around the small cab, he noticed that the gearshift was for an automatic transmission. “Oh, yeah, baby, that’s even better!”
He had been prepared to just use first or second gear and grind the transmission. He would burn the engine up to get the speed that he needed. However, thanks to automatic transmissions, he would not need to worry.
Jango put the truck into gear, and gunned the massive engine. The vehicle lurched forward, and quickly began to gather speed as he aimed the truck toward the entrance of the housing development that he had just left.
Jango fumbled around until he had found the switch that turned on the headlights. He switched them to the brightest setting and then pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor. The truck rocked and bounced as he left the parking lot and hit the large, desert lot. The truck bounced one more time, and then rode smoothly once he was on the road that led to his enemies.
Just as Jango had wrestled the truck onto the road, several vehicles had poured out of the entrance to the housing community. When the men had seen the huge truck coming straight at them, all of the vehicles had screeched to a stop and they began climbing out of the cars.
There looked to be more than fifty men, and all of them bristled with guns. Jango saw them raise their guns, and he saw the fiery dots of muzzle flashes as the men began shooting at him. He ducked down behind the dashboard as bullets stitched their way across the windshield.
Jango peeked over the dashboard, saw that he was two or three-hundred feet away from the large group of armed men, and decided that it was time to put his plan into action. He did not hesitate; action followed thought as fast as thunder followed lightning.
He wrenched the steering wheel hard to the left, which sent the truck and the trailer into a sharp sideways turn. In a flash, Jango grabbed his shotgun and stick, opened his door, and leapt from the moving vehicle. His powerful legs thrust him far from the vehicle as he jumped.
The truck was now side-on to the men, and moving at over fifty miles an hour. The vehicle had turned, which made the sidewalls of the tires on the trailer stutter on the co
ncrete of the road. When the tires caught on the concrete, the trailer jumped high into the air, and then came crashing back down onto the road.
When the massive trailer slammed into the road on its side, the top of the trailer burst open and thousands of heavy bowling balls hurtled toward the men. The results were gruesome.
The bowling balls burst from the truck like several thousand cannons firing their payloads all at once. The bowling balls slammed into the vehicles that the men had been driving, and slammed into the men themselves. The heavy orbs crushed bone, tore flesh, and decimated the ranks of Jango’s enemies.
The majority of the bowling balls missed the men, and turned the brick wall in the immediate area into a jumble of broken masonry.
Eight or nine of the men had managed to avoid any injury by being behind the bulk of their vehicles. They all began to fire their weapons at the truck that Jango had just vacated.
When he had leapt from the moving vehicle, he wasn't sure if he would live or die when his body hit the ground. Honestly, he didn't really care. Just as long as he had accomplished his goal, and his sister and her group of refugees made it out alive, he could die with grace.
Just before Jango struck the ground, he had loosened his entire body, and curled himself into an airborne fetal position. When he felt that the ground was close, he tucked his head as close to his knees as he could and spun into a series of flailing somersaults when he hit. He felt skin being torn from the back of his head, his elbows, and forearms, but the pain was muted. Although he lost his grip on the shotgun, he retained his stick. When he finally came to a stop, he was still alive.
Jango made a quick and silent mental inventory of his various injuries. He noted what felt like torn muscles, broken ribs, and various contusions. He was pleased to note that his duct tape bandage had held up against the high-speed tumble.
Slowly levering himself to a standing position, he swayed in place as he tried to remember what he was doing. He heard the sounds of gunfire and said, “Oh yeah, ha, now I remember.” With those words, he turned toward the wrecked hulk of the tractor-trailer rig, and made his slow limping way back to the field of battle.
Jango knew that if he gave the men a chance to regroup, they would kill him and chase down Vanessa and all the other women as well. His eyes searched the ground for his shotgun as the sky in the east began to show the rosy shades of pink, purple, and red that heralded sunrise.
When he spotted his shotgun, he saw that the barrel was irreparably bent. He reached his left hand behind him and felt the mangled butt stocks of the two double-barreled shotguns that he had tucked into his belt. He pulled one loose, and saw that the barrels and the triggers looked intact. He tucked the shotgun under his right arm and reached around with his left hand to pull out the other shotgun. When he saw that the second shotgun was still usable as well, he smiled.
He tucked his stick into his belt at the front of his pants, and took a double-barreled shotgun in each of his scarred fists. He limped toward his enemies with the inevitability of a force of nature.
Jango angled himself so that when he rounded on his enemies, he would come from the far end of the wrecked trailer. When he walked around the end of the trailer, he saw that the men had concentrated most of their firepower on the cab of the truck, just as he had expected.
He decided that a bold attack was the only way that he had a chance of evening the odds. Jango moved toward the men at a hobbling run, his stick tucked in his belt, and his shotguns pointed at his foes. When he was about fifty feet away, he cocked each barrel, and fired all four barrels at once.
The swarm of lead that Jango sent toward his enemies shredded the flesh of three of the men. All three men fell, two of them were dead, and one writhed and screamed in mortal agony as his life spilled out onto the pavement beneath him. The other eight men turned their weapons toward Jango, and began firing at him.
Jango tossed his shotguns, and then dropped to his stomach as he drew his pistol. He shot at the men, even as they fired back at him. Jango felt splinters of the pavement sting his flesh as bullets buzzed and whined all around him. He felt bullets graze his flesh and tug at his clothing, but the pain meant nothing; all he desired was to deal death until he had breathed his last breath.
To Jango, these men were even worse than the zombies. Zombies were mindless automatons that just wanted a mouthful of flesh. But these men, they made the choice of evil. They had made a conscious decision to perpetrate evil acts on the world around them. They, too, had the insatiable appetite that was a defining point of zombies. These men mindfully, though, rather than mindlessly, consumed the flesh of those who they were able to prey on.
To Jango, that was an unforgivable sin. He felt that it went far beyond any dictionary definition of cowardice, and he believed that anyone who chose to target those who were weaker than they were nothing more than twists; and twists deserved no mercy.
Three more men fell beneath fusillade of lead that Jango sent their way, but he was overmatched in numbers as well as firepower. The men, seeing their advantage, began to press forward as Jango dropped an empty magazine from the grip of his pistol and seated a full magazine. He saw that his end was near, and he smiled.
Jango let the slide slam forward to chamber a round, and he readied himself to die with a madman's grace.
He pressed his weight up with his left hand, and felt a bullet burn the length of his back. Jango made it to his feet, and raised his pistol.
Then, out of nowhere, he heard a honking sound coming from the other side of the wrecked truck. He watched the men turn away from him to look at whatever had made the noise.
Jango stood on unsteady feet, and he had just raised his pistol when he saw his car as it skidded around the side of the wrecked trailer. The big car threw a rooster tail of alkali dirt into the air as it jumped out of the lot and skidded to a stop on the street between him and the men.
What Jango saw next was the most wondrous and amazing site he had ever seen in his life. His car was filled with armed women! They hung out of the windows and fired double-barreled shotguns at his enemies like a post-apocalyptic version of Bonnie and Clyde.
His injuries had stretched even his unnatural endurance to the breaking point, and he barely felt the impact as he collapsed to the ground. Jango felt his life’s blood leaking from a hundred different wounds, and he knew that he was through.
A dull roaring sound filled his ears, and as his vision faded, Jango saw Vanessa climb from the driver's seat of his car. She held a double-barreled shotgun in each hand as she screamed, “You mother-fuckers leave my Jango alone!”
He heard the heavy “Boom!” of shotguns, and Jango smiled as his whole world faded into darkness.
Chapter 11:
No Flowers For Jango’s Grave
Jango regained consciousness by inches. The first clue that he had that he was still alive was the pulsing throb of his heartbeat. Next, his hearing returned, and he heard muffled voices deep in conversation. As he regained consciousness more fully, the voices became clearer, and clearer. Soon, he recognized one of the voices as Vanessa’s, and the other voice belonged to one of the nurses.
Jango's eyelids felt like they weighed a ton as he forced them open. He blinked against the bright lights of what appeared to be a fully functional operating room. The first thing he saw when his eyes had adjusted to the light was Vanessa with her hands resting lightly on the shoulders of the nurse who had put her arm around Vanessa. The two women stood at the foot of his bed, and they began kissing deeply with their bodies pressed tightly against one another.
Jango noticed that Vanessa was wearing heavy biker leathers and that she had a shotgun riding on her back in a scabbard. She also had a knife and a pistol on a belt that was loosely slung around her hips.
“Hey, this might be my only chance to see two chicks get it on,” Jango said in a raspy voice. “You mind stepping over where I can see you both a little better?”
Vanessa started violently, a
nd then gasped as tears started to fall down her face. “Jango, Jango, Jango! I just fucking knew you were too tough to die!” Vanessa hugged him, and then kissed him on his cheek.
Jango noticed that her kiss felt strange, and he reached his hand up to feel his face. It felt as if he had been growing a beard for weeks or even a month. “How long was I out?” He asked Vanessa.
“You've been in a coma for three weeks,” said the nurse who had been making out with Vanessa.
Jango looked at the two women and thought that they made a good couple.
Jango said, “You two look good together. You look happy, like a couple of fucking peas.” Then he added, “Little sister, you look like a hard-core biker bitch.” Jango had just paid her what he considered a compliment, and by the expression of pride and embarrassment on her face, he could see that Vanessa had taken it that way.
The nurse snorted, and said, “All men are pigs.”
“Not all men,” Jango replied. “Some of the men are zombies.” Then he laughed like crazy at his own joke.
Vanessa burst out laughing as well.
The nurse turned to her and asked, “Is he always like this?”
Vanessa replied, “I sure as hell hope so.” As Vanessa and Jango shared a look that could never be interpreted by anyone outside of their clan, he knew that no matter what relationship Vanessa had with the nurse, she would never turn her back on him or betray him.
A sudden thought occurred to Jango, and he asked, “My stick, my stick, where the hell is my stick?” He felt a pulse of superstitious panic race through his body, almost as if a part of himself was lost.
“Calm down, honey,” Vanessa said as she reached underneath Jango's hospital bed and retrieved his trusty Ironwood stick. She handed the stick to him, and he heaved a sigh of relief.